Environmental and resource footprints in a global context: Europe’s structural deficit in resource endowments

摘要: The European Union (EU) has proposed in its Resource-efficiency roadmap a ‘dashboard of indicators’ consisting four headline indicators for carbon, water, land and materials. EU recognizes the need to use consumption-based (or ‘footprint’) perspective capture global dimension resources their impacts. In this paper, we analyse how EU's footprints compare those other nations, what extent major economies world rely on embodied resource imports, implications are policy making based comparison. This study is first comprehensive multi-indicator comparison all relevant indicators, uses single consistent Multi-Regional Input Output (MRIO) database with unique high level product detail across countries. We find that Europe only region relies net imports considered. further powerful China others Asia-Pacific already dominate consumption from footprint perspective, while they still haven't reached prosperity developed Competition hence likely increase, even more vulnerable. A hot spot analysis suggests final food, transport housing priorities reduction efforts along life cycle. Further, countries similar Human Development Index can have very different footprints, pointing at societal organisation macro-level as option improvement. points options lowering footprint, becoming less dependent maintaining quality life. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd